Archive for November, 2010

It says something that a fairly significant fuel price increase at the pumps now goes unmentioned. Prices have inched up during September and October, but yesterday another 2p per litre – 9.1p per gallon – was added on to the cost of fuel in my local area making a gallon £5.54.

In years gone by a 9p per gallon increase would have led the news headlines. Now it doesn’t even get a mention. It’s become a familiar story, when wholesale prices are about to rise the cost and the pumps goes up by that percentage. When wholesale prices fall the price at the pumps reduces only by a percentage of the drop and even then only some time later.

Given the current agitated state of parts of our society perhaps it will only be a matter of time until the hauliers start to protest as the artificially high cost of fuel due to the swingeing duty added on by the government. Another campaign to blockade the refineries could add substantially to the mood of rebellion that is growing in the country. The silent majority might just start to find its voice and dig in its heels very soon.

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Mutual recognition of an accurate assessment of whom we should thank for keeping this country out of the Euro (the late Sir James Goldsmith) between Dr Richard North of EU Referendum and His Grace, Cranmer sparked this comment on the cleric’s erudite blog:

“Perhaps now Dr Richard North can do a screen grab of your header to this article, so he can show you congratulating him on congratulating you. And then you can do a screen grab of the resulting EUReferendum page, and so on, ad infinitum, until you both dissolve in a miasma of self-congratulatory cross-references…”

Why not?, said the good Doctor. Why not indeed?, said the late Cleric. Well, I would like to offer my congratulations to both! The greater the number of people who know the truth of the matter rather than being ill served by the media’s rewriting of history to fawn over the political class, the better. Gentlemen, this blog salutes you both! If only the late Sir Jimmy was around and blogging, we could capture and publish an image from his blog too.

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During the course of today certain sections of the blogosphere including one of my regular favourite reads, Longrider, have been up in arms about what appears to be a disturbing example of police exceeding and misrepresenting their authority.

Without applying for, or being in possession of, a court order, an Acting Detective Inspector from the Met Police’s CO11 department requested an ISP shut down the FitWatch website because:

In connection with our criminal investigation into registration or use of the domain name set out in this letter, we hereby confirm that:

• The domain is being used to undertake criminal activities

Attempting to Pervert the Course of Justice, contrary to Common Law We hereby request [redacted] to de-host this website for a minimum period of 12 months.

The site in question, FitWatch, styles itself as standing against the activities and behaviour of police Forward Intelligence Teams. Continuing in the same manner the site’s editor(s) published advice to those people involved in violence during the student protests in London. In addition to advising students who were engaged in unlawful activity not to give themselves in and to change their appearance, the advice also recommends such individuals dispose of the clothing they were wearing to hinder identification and remove the possibility of the clothing being used as identification evidence. It is this that the police have taken exception to and used as justification for their actions as detailed below:

REASON FOR CLOSURE

This website are committing offences of attempting to pervert the Course of Justice under Common Law.The website is providing explicit advice to offenders following a major demonstration in Central London. The demonstration was marred by violence and several subjects have already been arrested with a major police operation underway to identify and arrest further offenders.

The person controlling these websites has posted material held to be contrary to Common Law within the UK.

I hope everyone who was engaged in violence or criminal behaviour during the student protest is caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But what is written above will be deeply disturbing to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the law, for here the police are presenting as a fact something that is only alleged until a court determines otherwise. Note that last sentence – ‘held to be contrary to Common Law‘. Held by whom? That is the commonly accepted legal language for a matter that has been put before a court and judged upon. Despite there being none, the Acting Detective Inspector has deliberately given the impression that his request has legal force. As such the ISP immediately shut down the site.

A pertinent question would be, since when did the police take over the role of the judiciary? No doubt this officer feels the end justifies the means, but where does that slippery slope end? Will blogs like this be shut down if it makes a criticism a police officer takes exception to? Will politicians or civil servants task the police with getting sites closed down if they share inconvenient or embarrassing information? Could such action be used to silence opponents of, say, EU membership? What about climate change?

Make no mistake, what FitWatch did was ill advised and leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. They clearly want people who committed criminal acts to get away with what they did. At the very least no one could dispute they are trying to offer support and advice to people who are trying to evade justice. But it does not follow FitWatch have broken the law. The advice is no different to what a legal representative would say in a private consultation with a client and it is only the view of a police officer that such advice is illegal.

It is worrying in the extreme that police officers feel able to exceed their authority and misrepresent themselves in this way to censor speech or silence dissent. There must be consequences for this unacceptable over reach.

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Deirdre Duffy (left) is a PhD candidate and researcher in social policy at the University of Nottingham. She is also co-editor of the blog Human Rights in Ireland, which is part of the Guardian Legal Network.

This of course in the eyes of the Guardian makes her suitably qualified to talk about economics in a piece on Comment is Free and declare that the UK is little better than Ireland economically, posing the question ‘Ireland has received a media bashing over its economic policy – so why is the UK replicating its mistakes?’. Ms Duffy goes on to say:

Call me cynical, but it doesn’t look like the UK is doing much better than its neighbour. It’s true, Ireland’s in trouble. And yes, it’s going to cost us all. As the Guardian reported, the cost to the UK taxpayer of bailing out the Irish economy will be in excess of £7bn. Not only this, but other EU countries such as Portugal already fear Ireland’s toxic debt will have a contagion effect. But in many ways, the UK is in a worse situation.

Though Ireland’s debt is undoubtedly huge (£90bn), it’s a drop in the ocean compared with both the UK’s current national debt (£950bn) and the total personal debt of UK households (£1,457bn). Estimates suggest that by 2015, the average debt of every household in the UK will amount to more than £70,000 – almost three times the current national average household income. At present, 1,753 people in the UK are made redundant daily, while 787,000 people have been unemployed for more than 12 months. In 2009, a property was repossessed every 10 minutes. Every four minutes, someone in the UK is declared insolvent.

The rest of her piece is typical Guardian big statist exercise in economic illiteracy where she decries Irish spending cuts that, if they had not been made, would have actually resulted in that country’s national debt being even bigger than it already is.

But in the segment quoted above Duffy makes a valuable point. For if as Duffy says the UK is in a worse situation than Ireland and our national debt dwarfs that of our celtic neighbour, what business does the UK have finding at least £7 billion (probably through additional government borrowing) to contribute to the EU mandated bail out fund? Surely that is the kind of economic insanity she is trying to rail against.

All it shows is that people like Deirdre Duffy don’t think things through. They put all the dots on the page but mentally they are incapable of connecting them to see the picture in front of them. But then, that is why they hold the ludicrous ideological positions they do and why they are writing in that pisspoor paper to begin with.

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What else will he try to get away with? The subject of this speculation is of course David Cameron.

After he was exposed of rank hypocrisy by talking the talk and failing to walk the walk when it came to appointing members of his party hack entourage to taxpayer funded government positions, Honest Dave has:

performed a U-turn by removing photographer Andrew Parsons and videographer Nicky Woodhouse from the public payroll

It is a good day to sneak out such news now that the Palace and Number 10 have coordinated and agreed today’s announcement of a Royal Wedding. Keep the masses distracted and all will be well.

No doubt we should all be offering messages of gratitude for this benevolence and laser-like focus on minimising the cost of Cameron’s ego to taxpayers. But the fact remains the other former members of Cameron’s clique remain in their new government positions paid for by you and me. So Cameron has actually got away with it by rewarding his hangers on with well paid government jobs and tidy little pensions.

The political equivalent of nepotism is alive and well during our period of austerity.

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Rejoice! Forget the American Dream. Another country is the place to be. Oh yes.

Where else in the world can you pitch up in a distant country and ask for asylum and be provided with protection, accomodation and money completely free?

Where else in the world can you indulge in criminality unmolested, taking hard drugs and not having to contribute to the society which has afforded you protection from supposed oppression?

Where else in the world can you so hate your hosts’ values you can take yourself off from that bountiful sanctuary and travel to a country that supplies the majority of the world’s heroin, where camps operate to train people to slaughter innocent civilians and where terrorists are killing your host’s soliders, to play a part in the insurgency?

Where else in the world can you try to return to your host country using a forged passport to conceal your true identity and have that questionable criminal behaviour and your motives completely ignored because you complain that after your capture you claim to have been tortured?

Where else in the world can you then continue to avoid any examination of your own actions and motives for being around terror training camps in a warzone and trying to return to your host country in suspicious circumstances using a forged passport even though you are allowed to return legally using your own?

Where else in the world can you claim to have only gone to an opiate and terrorist haven only in order to get off drugs and still be believed without question by your hosts’ public service broadcaster and compensation chasing legal whores?

Where else in the world can you be encouraged to take legal action against your host’s government and secure a settlement payment believed to be in excess of £1 million?

Britain!

Yes, move over America, it’s time to celebrate the British Dream! Britain is the new land of opportunity. Britain is where anything can happen and pretty much does. Britain is the land where you can pull yourself up by your sand covered bootstraps and secure wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Britain is where you are not held to account for your criminal behaviour and desire to partake in atrocities against its people. Britain is where after all this the self loathing liberal elite will blame themselves for your actions and ensure you will continue to be coddled by the state for life at the expense of its people. Britain is where you can hit the jackpot for being nothing more than a parasitic ne’er do good. Congratulations! Welcome to our land of craven appeasment and moral inversion where, like Binyam Mohamed, all you need to get on is malice aforethought and a violent intent.

‘Will Bill Cash, the historian, change his mind and agree to support Ireland? Veteran Eurosceptic says no to supporting Ireland as Downing Street confirms Britain is prepared to help fund a bailout.’

So writes The Guardian’s pride and joy, Nicholas Watt on the much acclaimed (ok, I made that bit up) Wintour and Watt Blog. Not content with posting the question, Watt includes a photograph of Bill Cash with the strapline: ‘Bill Cash believes Britain should not contribute a penny to help its ailing neighbour.’ Nice. Not the slightest bit of emotive rabble rousing from yet another internationalist, big government fanatic who hasn’t got the sense he was born with. He ruminates thus:

When you are blinded by hatred it is sometimes difficult to see the wider picture.

Bill Cash, the grand daddy of Tory Eurosceptics, gave a masterclass of this today when Downing Street confirmed that Britain may have to contribute to a possible bailout of the Irish Republic.

Not a penny of British taxpayers’ money should go to bail out Ireland.

Cash does not want to help the Irish Republic because it is a member of the eurozone. Ireland has only itself to blame, goes the Eurosceptic thinking, and should turn instead to the likes of France and Germany which enticed Dublin to join the single currency spurned by Britain.

If Cash is struggling to summon up any generosity towards Ireland, perhaps a potted history of his career might help him to think again:

Oh piss off. Clearly Nicholas Watt is another idiot subscriber to the idea of the magic money tree that allows us to harvest vast quantities of cash on demand. Perhaps Watt needs a little (well actually a lot) help here. His spiteful and pejorative comments ignore a very simple fact. To help out Ireland the already heavily indebted UK would have to borrow even more money at a time we need to reduce public debt.

Part of the supposed benefit of the Euro currency was that Eurozone members would support each other in times such as these. We are not a Eurozone member and we have our own problems to overcome. It is not any imagined hatred of Ireland as Watt disgracefully suggests which is at the heart of Bill Cash’s views, it is economic illiteracy of accepting we do not have enough money for our own needs yet borrowing billions on markets nervous of our debt levels to send to Ireland. The fact is if Cash’s comments had been made by a non-EUsceptic, Watt would not have written this piece.

Think about it another way. Perhaps when the Unison trade union (currently hard at it recruiting new members) starts castigating the government for not spending more on its domestic departments, Watt will be happy to tell them it was more important to borrow money to send to Ireland rather than use it for the benefit of the UK. Realism and common sense are qualities notably absent from the Guardian. But if nothing else at least the Guardianista is always good for a bit of fantasy economics.

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Hot on the heels of the European Union sending election monitors to Tanzania to ensure the people can ‘get the government they voted for’ we now have David Cameron turning to the theme of democracy and democratic accountability.

In the House of Commons today the slimy hypocrite prefixed his statement about the G20 meeting in Korea with a reference to the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. Without any sense of irony Cameron said:

I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in welcoming the liberation, at last, of Aung San Suu Kyi. Her tenacity and courage in the face of injustice has been truly inspiring. I spoke to her this morning to pass on the congratulations of everyone in this country on her release and her remarkable stand on democracy and human rights. We must now work to ensure that her release is followed by freedom for more than 2,000 other political prisoners in Burma and that this becomes the first step towards the people in Burma genuinely being able to choose the person whom they want to run their country.

Oh piss off. It never ceases to amaze me how a quisling stooge like Cameron, who pointedly refuses to ask the British people for their consent to remain in the European Union, can stand there and make statements such as that in italics above when he denies the British people any say over who runs Britain – namely the unelected and unaccountable EU.

Why is it that self determination and the ability to chose who runs a country is a principle that should only apply in other countries? If Cameron had an ounce of integrity he would accept that principle, first and foremost, must apply in Britain. But he won’t because in his own slimy way Cameron is every bit as much a dictator as the members of the military junta in Myanmar, restricting freedom and exerting control over the people he supposedly leads – because he thinks he knows what’s best for us.

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The EU is at it again. Last time it fixed its gaze upon Ireland it was to frighten, cajole and bribe the population into voting to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. The motives were entirely selfish. This time the EU is trying to pressure the Irish government into taking a €77 billion bailout package – again for entirely selfish motives because the EU is desperate to appear relevant and essential to member states.

Once again we see the media used to paint the Irish into a corner, with EurActiv keeping the flame burning by declaring that ‘Ireland does not rule out using EU bailout fund’. But the Irish disagree as the Irish Times carries the news that ‘Ministers claim fiscal plan, budget negate bailout need’.

The overlords in Brussels will not rest until Ireland is again beholden to them by taking the bailout. The dirty tricks are already being played and the EU is determined to browbeat the ungrateful serfs into submission. Nasty stuff.

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Never underestimate the capacity of the self loathing liberal elite to indulge in supremely distasteful and arrogant commentary. Why did Peter Preston pick today, Remembrance Sunday, of all days to publish this insulting article on the Guardian online?

On the day people fell silent to remember the sacrifice of men and women who died in the service of this country, this pompous prat serves up a piece called ‘Ditch the Falklands – It makes no economic or political sense to hang on to the Falklands, but no one will face the truth’. What a complete and utter prick this man is. He is an absolute moron. This is not the day to have a discussion about pounds, shillings and pence spent defending the Falklands after blood has been spilled to protect and uphold the self determination of the Falkland Islanders.

Some of those poppies and wreaths laid today at War Memorials around the world, including on the Falkland Islands, were to mark the sacrifice of the 258 British servicemen who died in the fight to retake this sovereign British territory from Argentina. Servicemen who endured appalling conditions to expel the invaders and free the British citizens who live there and absolutely wish to remain British. But to Preston on Remembrance Sunday it is more important to grandstand in the paper and try to appear profound by declaring that we should simply abandon the islanders for economic reasons – thus ensuring that the British servicemen who were killed, maimed and injured suffered for nothing. If any Briton should be abandoned it should be this washed up old hack.

It is hard to feel anything other than complete revulsion at Peter Preston. He is beneath contempt. I hope he didn’t dare show his grotesque face at a war memorial today, it would have been an hypocrisy of the worst kind. He couldn’t have been much more insulting if he had danced on the graves of those we lost. Incensed doesn’t come close to how I feel about this.

To resort to cliche, he is the kind of person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. He owes an immediate, unreserved and grovelling apology to the families of those who died.

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The always excellent Boiling Frog regales a story on his blog about a police murder inquiry in London. Knowing a lot of police officers I know how some stories get embellished in the canteen to play up the ‘No way!’ reaction. But anyway, read on because the tale is more than plausible.

Put yourself in the position of a CCTV camera operator. You see a fight break out on a street in broad daylight and at the same time you notice a car driving in a bus lane. Where would you focus your attention to record evidence? Read the Frog’s post for yourself to see what allegedly happened and what the consequences were.

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The Sunday Telegraph reports that Tory backbenchers have warned of an increasingly dangerous gulf between their views and those of the Government on the issue of what constitutes a transfer of power. Quelle surprise!

What frustrates more than anything else is that well before the General Election anyone with their eyes and ears open could see David Cameron was completely bought in to the EU project. Cameron and his spineless sidekick William Hague have no intention of stopping the march of ‘ever closer union’ resulting in a United States of Europe run by an unelected and unaccountable bureau of mandarins in Brussels.

If the Tory MPs who are actually willing to oppose the leadership had not been asleep at the wheel and believed Cameron’s spin, they would not now be making comments such as this:

“The EU Bill has incensed the eurosceptics. It is rubbing salt in the wounds. It would not have stopped any of the transfers of power that have happened since May. It is the worst kind of Blairite spin.

“It is extremely foolish of the Government to raise it all again if they are not going to do something properly. There is a big and very worrying divide on this.”

It defies belief that the Tory MPs who are up in arms about the European Union Bill ever thought Cameron and Hague would table any instrument that would arrest the relentless march of the bureaucrats. The quisling duo certainly had, and have, no intention of affording any power to backbenchers or the people that would allow voters to derail the project the political class across Europe is pressing ahead with in defiance of the wishes of the people they are supposed to serve.

The only way these Tory MPs will stop Cameron is to remove him as leader. But they are too self interested and too scared to act. They still buy into the rubbish that Cameron made the Tories electable. Too many believe without Cameron they will lose their seats. Yet Cameron cost the Tories an outright majority because people started to realise he was nothing but a slimy hypocrite who could not and should not be trusted. The vote was against Labour, not for the Tories.

So instead of conviction politicians acting in the national interest we have this Chamber of the Bleaters who are more affronted about being hoodwinked than about the scandalous way the people are being conned and dragged into a future they do not want. Despite this they stay part of the Conservative party that has ceased to be conservative. They make a few noises now and again. But rather than act on principle they work in their own interest, to preserve their membership , their salary and their gold plated pensions. None of them are worth spit.

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The Devil’s Kitchen morphed into The Devil’s Knife. But now Chris’ blog looks like slipping into animated suspension because despite clamouring for change it is clear none will be forthcoming.

As he eloquently sets out in his rationale to stop blogging (for the time being at least) this is the reality of our situation here in the UK:

The second reason to keep blogging was that there was some hope of change in the near(ish) future. Now, we have seen that change, and it is no change at all.

We are ruled by same loathsome, lying, corrupt, venal bastards rule over us: they are simply wearing slightly different novelty masks. Indeed, the simple fact that I must write the words “we are ruled” is sign enough that nothing has changed.

We are in for another five years of the same “dreadful, overbearing and untrustworthy” government as we have had for the past thirteen. And then? Well, either these same awful people will be returned to power or the Other Lot of awful shit-bags—the ones that we’ve only just got rid of—will be brought in instead. Again.

And no matter which bunch of bastards we are forced to elect to Parliament will make little difference: the state will continue expanding, we will continue to pay more tax, society will become more atomised and dangerous, business will become more difficult, civil liberties will be removed, everyday pleasures will be ever more circumscribed and punished and our lives will continue to be a little bit harder and more miserable with every year that passes.

Every word is echoed by this blog. Reading the Devil’s assessment brought to mind a quote from John F. Kennedy – and it is one the political class today would do well to think on:

‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.‘

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A healthy dose of realism from the head of our rapidly dwindling and increasingly ineffective armed forces. General Sir David Richards has said that the West cannot defeat al-Qaeda and militant Islam. Well, yes and no.

Fighting a conventional campaign against an opponent that by necessity uses unconventional methods will result in the failure we are seeing. And it is pointless talking about defeating militant Islam when the politicians and judiciary in this country indulge their agents, and kid themselves that by appeasing them or showing benevolence we can convince them to turn their attentions away from us to something else.

The Islamists sneer at such weakness and draw strength from it because it convinces their warped minds that their aims are righteous and favoured by Allah. The only thing they understand is strength. Anything else spawns their contempt. As such we must be uncompromising in our fight against them. Our politicians do not understand this enemy. They do not understand that there can be negotiation because the only thing the Islamists want is our defeat and fealty to a global Islamic state.

We are engaged in asymmetric warfare with this aggressor. Until the politicians accept the reality and stop trying to fight symmetric battles against them, even mere containment cannot be assured. Our politicians seem incapable of learning the lessons of the past, therefore condemning us to repeat the mistakes of yesteryear. We cannot buy these Islamists off. All we can do is keep killing them so their capability is limited.